MORE HILLS ON THE PLAINS FOR KGI MEMBERS

In some States of America and some other countries it is illegal to dry your clothes outside, you must use an indoor clothes drier, how crazy is that!

Here is Aussie land most of us dry our clothes outside, I very rarely use an indoor clothes drier and many of us hang our clothes indoors, on drying racks, in winter or on wet days.

Well let me shock you America, look over my side fence today and you will see a work of art, my new Hills large size collapsible clothes line.My very talented Industrial Designer son designed this and I love it.

It has 32 little lines, 60 metres of line space and 64 hooks to hang shirts on. The whole darn wash fits on it and it glides effortlessly up and down. It has a cover to make it like an umbrella and you can remove the whole thing and it folds away for storage.

Remember the old steel Hills Hoists (Icon of South Australia and included in the Sydney Olympics Opening Ceremony) they were hard work to wind up sometimes. But as you can see Kate is growing peaches on hers.

Okay now for the gardening bit, it did not take me too long to work out what I could do with my old hills hoist. A shade house for young or shade loving plants. We have some new plans for arranging the shade cloth down the sides. I think I shall even grow some things hanging from pots, I have been reading on the KGI forum about people growing things upside down to save space!

Check out this cool shade house. Gardening Australia - Hills Hoist Makeover (I actually like my air conditioned version better.)

I could say I would love to fill up our heat barren front yard with old hoists and shade cloth but I wont say that. But instead I am digging tiny circular gardens in the front and planting zucchinis and pumpkins. I dont know they will survive the hot summer days, Deb uses old sheets to protect some plants and we use shadecloth over our back garden bed.

Bob is really the gardener(i.e. the one who makes the compost and does all the hard work) but I am becoming more interested because I love eating the fresh veggies and herbs we grow. I also like designing garden beds and letting plants go to flower then seed. I love the bees and bugs that come to the garden and I love growing different things, last year we grew a pepino plant and this year we are growing okra.

I can understand now why people get obsessed with their gardens, there is always something to plant or prune or harvest or just enjoy. There are always new varieties of seeds to germinate and new things to cook, eat and learn about. I reckon it wont be long before I start calling myself a gardener but for the moment I am still a cook, well maybe a kitchen gardener.

And speaking of Kitchen Gardeners please sign up and join KITCHEN GARDENERS INTERNATIONAL, we need all the experiences of gardeners from different parts of the world, different climates, different experiences, you who grow different plants and have different ways of storing, cooking and preserving veggies.

SO COME ON VEGGIE GARDEN BLOGGERS JOIN UP AND GIVE KGI A PROMO ON YOUR BLOG!